


Man... Creature... Thing?

by trascendenza



Category: Firefly, Superman Returns (2006)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Personal Favorite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-01
Updated: 2007-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-04 00:49:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trascendenza/pseuds/trascendenza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Serenity</em> runs into a little bump in the road.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Man... Creature... Thing?

**Author's Note:**

> There was going to be more of this, and then there... wasn't. So it stands as is.

_THWUMP._

"What… _was_ that?"

_Serenity_ had tilted to a most interesting—and most decidedly _not_ horizontal angle—with a stomach-heaving and metallic-groaning speed.

"I have no idea."

"_Serenity_ just up and tilted herself all on her own, then?"

"Space _le se_, maybe? Could have been a meteoroid with a grudge against our hull."

"Don't believe I hired you to do uneducated guessin', Wash. You find out what that was." He continued, muttering under his breath, "and if that was space trash, I'll eat my own boot for evenin' meal."

Mal clicked on the comm.

"This is your Captain speaking. Looks like we're experiencing a mite of axis-turnin' turbulence, but nothin' to worry yourselves over. Yet."

He clicked it off.

"Got an ident yet?"

"Sir…"

Mal closed his eyes and prepared with an internal sigh; Wash usually only called him "sir" in a deferential voice when it was something he wasn't going to like.

"Like tearin' off a skin-patch, Wash. Spit it out."

Wash swiveled to the side so he could see the readout on the screen.

Mal leaned forward, looking at it wonderingly. "Well, now."

He read it again just to be sure.

"I do reckon a man just flew into the side my ship."

*

Mal hauled him in with the old "swing out a line and pray the 'verse don't drag you out with it" method, deftly buoying the man in the funny-looking outfit into the airlock. He'd barely made it out in time; much longer, and he would have floated right off, like so much space junk.

The crew, ordered to stay away, was naturally waiting just inside.

Zoë's gun was locked even before the airlock seals were released.

There was a second of stunned silence as Mal dragged him in (carrying would have looked more heroic, he knew, but the bugger was gorram _heavy_) and everyone erupted into conversation all at once.

"You watch him, sir. I got your back," from Zoë, still aiming true.

"Well, he don't look so bad," from Kaylee, who was crouching down to take a look at him.

"Looks can be deceiving, child," from Book, who was making the sign of the cross quickly over himself. "No man in God's creation should be able to do such a thing."

"Ain't no man, preacher—sure as hell don't look like no man I ever seen, and I seen some pretty strange ones since I started ridin' with you, Mal." Jayne scratched his head. "You sayin' that… that _thing_ knocked us half outta space and lived to tell the tale?"

"If you'll just let me by," Simon said, trying to squeeze his way between Zoë and Jayne, "I can check him for injuries."

"Biomagnetism failed him in the dark place where only the red glows," River said, crouching next to Kaylee, her hair falling down over the stranger's serene face.

Mal let the man _thunk_ onto the ground and twisted his suit helmet off. He took in a big gulp of fresh—well, fresh compared to his own recycled air inside the suit—ship air.

"Shut your traps and get to work, people. Simon—make him up a bed in the infirmary. This fella can survive poundin' our ship he'll survive just a few feet longer. Kaylee—don't you got an engine you need to be tendin'? Jayne, just—go'n polish your guns or somethin'. Book, you watch River, make sure she don't touch that airlock, sometimes those wires don't settle into place right away and last thing we need now is less oxygen for the already-sufferin' brains on this ship. Zoë, you're with me. Help me drag this man… creature… thing… to the infirmary."

"Oh, my," said Inara, who watched the spectacle of Mal and Zoë half-carrying, half-lugging their unconscious passenger behind them from a safe distance. (She liked to stay out of Mal's yelling radius whenever possible, which was unfortunately not very often.) She was so shocked she even forgot her Companion training for a second, and slipped into the slang of her childhood. "What in the 'verse is he _wearing_?"

*

"He should be drenched in yellow, from head to foot. Injuries are untreatable by another other means: the dense cellular layout is impenetrable. So thick you couldn't swim it in, Simon, not even if you wanted to."

"_Mei-mei_," Simon said gently, setting aside another bent syringe, "I'm trying to work. We can talk in just a minute."

"Earth That Was didn't know what to do with him, either," she said quietly, walking on the balls of her feet around the infirmary.

Suddenly, Jayne swiveled into the doorway pointing an enormous blaster right at the patient bed.

Simon didn't bat an eyelash. "If I needed a guard, I would have asked Book," he said, debating for a second and then setting aside an instrument that he couldn't easily replace.

"Shepherd won't shoot to kill. Ain't got no business guardin' no one."

"Maybe, but at least he won't shoot _me_ by accident."

Jayne grinned mercenary, letting the gun fall to the side of his thigh. "I shoot you, boy, you can be sure it won't be no accident."

"Cut the chit-chat, girls," Mal said, clapping a hand on Jayne's shoulder. "We got more pressin' matters than the size of your blasters."

Simon opened his mouth to protest but Mal quelled him with a meaningful look. River was looking at the stranger intently, no doubt deconstructing and reconstructing him from his nuclei up.

"Is he dangerous? Can I poke him?" Wash skidded to a stop in front of the infirmary door, looking like a yougin' let loose in a berry field. He paused, his face stuck in an interesting configuration that showed he was somewhere between amusement and downright confusion.

"What in the 'verse is the man-thing _wearing_?"

"That, my dear Wash," said Mal, stringing his fingers through his beltloops and rocking back on his heels, "is what we've all been askin' ourselves since he up and ran himself into our ship."


End file.
